on hearing the still small Voice

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Every time Pastor Albert asks me to do this, my heart gets tight and I feel a knot in my stomach. It’s an agonizing process to write a sermon. I’ve heard one pastor say it’s like giving birth every week. Being six months pregnant I don’t know if I’d completely agree, but I understand his sentiments!

As agonizing as it is, it’s also an incredible blessing, because few things in my life demand such a high level of dependence on the Lord as getting up to the pulpit to share God’s Word. Interestingly, I find myself leaning on the Lord’s understanding just as much after giving the sermon as before. Because when I step down from the pulpit, a wave of insecurity plagues my mind as I ruminate over my performance.

Early next morning, I laid in bed, as I often do, and started conversing with the Lord. It started off with an acknowledgement that I felt incredibly dissatisfied with the sermon I had delivered. I invited the Lord to give light and direction as to why I felt that way. As I edited and re-edited my sermon during the week, the more my message started looking like Albert’s sermons. The content was mine, but the structure was not. I felt more and more, that I was losing my own voice. I admire and respect my husband’s ability to preach, and perhaps this led me to believe that I had to sound like him. Inevitably, the most common response I got after the sermon from close friends was, “It didn’t quite sound like you.”

How ironic that I had shared in my sermon that God created women differently than men. And that one of the ways He is glorified, is when we fulfill our purposes in the way he uniquely designed us. God made me a woman. He made me emotional, and relational, and gave me the ability to respond to the things around me with the deepest recesses of my heart. He gave me the longing to connect meaningfully with people as I communicate my thoughts, desires, and fears. But I had successfully squeezed my voice into something that was not me.

God taught me that morning that I am perfectly created to compliment the gifts of my husband, not to compete against it. I also sensed Him telling me that my voice, a women’s voice, is valued and precious when I am speaking from His Spirit.

It was a lesson well learned, not just for the development of my preaching skills, but also how I partner with my husband in all areas of my life.

My dialogue with the Lord left me encouraged that He was continually teaching and molding me into a woman of faith – into whom He could use to reveal His glory.

There is a noisy cricket that lives in my head. It’s constantly thinking, usually complaining, sometimes angry, and rarely finds herself at peace with what is happening around her. What an effort it is to soothe this rankled little cricket. At the smallest provocation, she bristles, coils back, and prepares to affront the offender with her passionate speculations.

Ordinarily, this cricket’s mad chirping is contained within me, but snippets of her base thoughts slip out, admittedly at times gush out, leaving a wake of loved ones in the deluge.

Perhaps I’m being overly-dramatic, but there are days when I sincerely feel this way and I don’t like it. I want peace, gentleness, self-control. I want ease, simplicity, and water to my soul. I want God’s Spirit to calm the cricket.

Lately, I’ve been attempting to listen to that still, small voice of God, not only during my quiet time with Him, but all the time. I realize I repress His voice especially on those occasions I want to go my own way and do my own thing – which eventually leads me to a dark path of twisted discontentment.

As I approach my 3rd trimester of my 4th child, I know it will be increasingly difficult to quiet the noise of stress, anxiety, and frustration from the busyness of life, but I am a determined woman.

Father God, I pray for more of You and less of me. As I submit to You in every thought, deed, and word, I pray for evidence of a transformed life.

I have to laugh out loud. The doorbell just rang. It was the plumber coming to fix our faucet. Noticing I was pregnant he made a comment saying, “Well that’s going to be a lot of fun!”. I laughed and replied, “Fun?” He then looked at me seriously and asked, “Well what do you want then?” “I want peace and tranquility in the midst of chaos.”

He then grabbed my hand and started to pray for me. A plumber. Prayed for me. Out of the blue. Praise God for His still, small voice coming from unexpected places!